The people most worried about the ExpressVote XL in New York point to what happened in Northampton County.
In 2019, voters there said the machine’s touchscreens were either too sensitive or not sensitive enough, so some candidates were hard to select, while in other cases, the wrong candidate was selected. Also, in the local judge’s race, an instructional box on the machine’s screen was read as a candidate in the system, so some votes went to the box instead of an actual person, according to Spotlight PA. Then, in 2023, the machine printed the wrong information on the paper ballot when people voted for a judicial candidate, though officials said the votes were correctly stored in the barcode.
In Philadelphia in 2020, poll staffers reported issues with the machines at more than 40% of polling locations, including hypersensitive touchscreens and printer jams, Reuters found.
In 2019, a coalition of election security groups filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania to decertify the use of the machines there. Four years later, the lawsuit settled with an agreement that counties using the machines would upgrade the software, the state would publish reports about malfunctions, and the public would get more opportunities to witness the state’s examination of voting systems.
Dominion had sued the New York City Board of Elections to stop the award of the $70 million contract for to ES&S on the basis that the contract was not the lowest bidder. New York City ES&S's offering were easier to set up. Courts did not issue a stay in the case, noting that doing so would jeopardize the implementation of the vote in time for the election.[7]
Both companies had problems in the implementation in the first year, with ES&S being criticized after it was revealed that poll workers were scanning the ballots with the ballot side visible to the public in the primary. Officials said they fixed the problem by training ballot workers.[8] Dominion suffered a problem in the 1st Congressional District in the general election after the machines initially indicated that Tim Bishop had won by 3,500 votes but by the next night officials had declared his opponent Randy Altschuler the victor by 400 votes.
By
racer254 ·
